A- A good 3-4 finger sea foam head. White and creamy. A dark red tan colored beer. A little cloudy with some carbonation rising from the bottom. Head has a lot of staying power. Hangs around for a while. Good lacing as a result of the thick foam.

S- Smells like a mix between prunes and mildew. You can almost smell the carbonation burn your nostrils. Yeasty.

T- At first there is a yeasty foot taste to it. Every other sip there's a quick hit of dark figs and sweet dark fruit. Major taste of alcohol. The aftertaste is just a sour flavor.

M- Lots of carbonation that just overpowers the whole beer.

O- Some beers I have had in the past tend to get better as they get closer to the bottom. I poured out the first half of the beer and poured the second half of the bottle. No such luck. Just as unpleasant as the first half. Could not finish this one. (856 characters)

This beer was tasted on 11/24/08, a 500ml. bottle out of a Duvel tulip glass. The beer was bottled on the 109th day of 2008. Initial appearance was a beauiful reddish-brown amber colour with a mouth watering 2 finger cream head. Unfortunately the smell and taste did not compare to the look. All I could smell was active yeast which overwhelmed any other flavours the beer might have had. The taste was the same yeast, yeast, and more yeast. I would say at least for me the beer is not very drinkable considering it was the first beer that I have poured in a long time. Not a big fan of German beer styles though, more of a Belgian guy, so I hope this brew will improve with more age. Overall, at this point of bottle ageing was very disappointed by this brew which is listed on BA's top 100 list. (797 characters)

I've heard so much about this one, thought it was high time to give it a shot.Appearance is good, looks just like any dopplebock I've had.The smell, well this is where we get off to a bad start. It's got a musky, mildewy smell like you get from a poorly kept men's locker room.At best it tastes like rotten prunes spiked with acetone. Let's just call this stuff, "Rotten Prune Punch", for lack of a better term.I lived in Germany for 2 years many years ago, drank many a dopplebock and this junk wouldn't make it past first base.I'm highly disappointed, but that's the chances you take in this "hobby". (608 characters)

Sour considering the style…really sour. I really don’t know how to describe what I’m tasting here. There’s a sweet malt flavor here, some dark roasted fruits, some rum. I am not really noticing the spices mentioned on the bottle and in other reviews. Perhaps in the rum flavors.

8.2% can be nothing, but here it dominates this beer. Ever sip bites with alcohol. There isn’t anything else to help mellow this either.

I’m completely disappointed in this one. The body is thin, lacks carbonation, the taste is a touch sour, and frankly nothing here is done well. Considering the reviews I may have simply had my expectations too high but I’ve simply had much better doppelbocks and it isn’t a style I seek out. That said this comes off like say a dark imperial hef.

I really want to score this higher, but I can't think of a reason to do so. (983 characters)

Pour is a dark ruby brown with garnet highlights when held to light. Fluffy white head that leaves no lacing.

smell is strong of booze and ripe grapes and spice. I got no banana at all like others have described it.

taste followed right along with spices, booze and an odd wine, grape, prune taste. Not really enjoyable and totally different from what I expected. After the initial shock of the taste, it mellowed out into a sweet brown sugar malty flavor that was nice.

mouthfeel was nice, great carbonation and left a nice but brief coating in the mouth.

overall, not for me but i will give it another shot to make sure i didnt have a bad bottle or was just having an off day. (715 characters)

Here goes .another one down the hatch, a few more of these and I wont be able to judge a thing. Anyways, the head come in a shade of off-white that is often associated with cheap white walls. The bier color is ..um .root beer candy brown. The aroma is that of a lemon/citrus hefe. Slightly off-colored from most hefe smells. It tastes like a burnt orange peel soaked in a light hefe-weizen. Brewed for the hefe lovers only, and not for the beginner hefe drinker. (465 characters)

When poured into my glass, this beer poured a dark brown head with medium sized bubbles. The nose was that of clove and I could definitely taste the alcohol in this beer. I just couldn't acquire a taste for this beer. I thought it had a slight bitter aftertaste. To each his/her own. (283 characters)

Very dark in color, pours thick, and has an oddly bright white head for such a thick beer. Smells of dark fruits, plums, and sugar.

Up front it tastes of barley, and dates but the swallow finishes with a wheats taste which clears up the sweetness that would normally persist from such flavors, a very nice balance. Goes very well with sushi!

Nice beer overall, id definatinely give it another go

After finishing the bottle, I noticed the upfront sweetness of the beer starts to build and kit gets sweeter as you sip, not something I enjoyed (543 characters)

Appearance- dark hazy brown with a big thick head. Had to wait a few minutes and continue pouring.
Smell- Whoa.... Pepper and cloves!!!!
Taste- watery and thin with nothing more than clove and pepper.
Mouthfeel- watery. Slight bubbly carbonation.

Overall- The first sip gives you all this clove and pepper, and just when you think the beers about to kick it up a notch... it doesn't.
A beer I could drink a few of, but not worthy of the price. Not a bad 1 but nothing special here either!!! (510 characters)

OK, this is getting to be a bit much for me. How is it possible that I find similarities in three beers in a row? The color, here, is different. But the taste... Yeah. Nutty and malty, for sure, but some of that same brown sugar taste (not the sweet part). Fine mouthfeel. I'm just not interested today. I've got to go and grab something good - to make sure that it's not just an off day for me! (395 characters)

I have found that I do not like what I would term big over the top alcoholic brews and this fits that description.

Two fingers of head when poured but this quickly drops with some retention. Murky brown in colour. Aromas of dark fruit and overwhelming alcohol which persisted on the palate. The alcohol just wiped out everything else for me. Totally dominant. Perhaps better with food? (386 characters)

A deep off-white head sat on top of a moody reddy/browny coloured body, lots going on as bubbles rise through the beer to replenish the head.

Sweet malty/yeasty/banana/vanilla smells.

The taste is a toxic, vibrant, fizzy mix of the aforementioned aromas, a little too sweet in my opinion with the vanilla and banana flavours coming through the most. Add a large hunk of treacle toffee into the taste arena and you've got the right amount of sweetness I found.

The alcohol is well hidden and only arrives as you finish the beer, warming the mouth nicely. I expected more from this well respected and thought of beer, too sweet for me. (712 characters)

This is the 2002 brewery-aged version. Apparently Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Bucs won the Super Bowl, and the Euro was adopted in this fine year. Served in a weizen glass.

A - Two fingers of quick-dissolving foam, over top of an attractive transparent orange-brown liquid with lots of bubbles and suspended sediment. No lace, cap, collar, nada - looks like sparkling juice or something.

S - Very vinous, but also some date, caramel, and figgy malt character. There's a touch of booziness - kind of in a rum-soaked banana way - and maybe some spice as well. It's a little reminiscent of some Kuhnhenn beers (Winter Wonder, Fourth Dementia), but not as good.

T - Yikes! Taste is incredibly bland - there's a little bit of oxidized wet cardboard character, and only the faintest bit of sweet dark fruit malt. If I had aged this on my own and it had gone downhill like this I wouldn't bother reviewing it, but because Schneider actually packages these vintages and markets them as such I have no choice but to be hard on this brew.

D - If I wanted to get drunk I could finish this, as it's actually quite bland. However, since I actually want beer that tastes good, or at least tastes like SOMETHING, my drain will be savoring this brew instead.

I will review a fresh bottle at some point in the future, but for the time being people need to be warned that the "vintage" Aventinus is pretty bad. (1,520 characters)

A- chocolate brown with a nice full tan head that settles into a generous lace.

S- caramel and roasted barley. there is also that"I drank too much at a German bier gaarten" smell to it.

T- yep, the bier gaarten thing again. This beer is plenty sweet with caramel and brown sugar leading the way. It packs plenty of wallop at 8.2% ABV, but (for me) it drinks like a strong barley wine.

MF- sweet that finishes wet. No too impressive for me, but this is not how I like my beer. .

O- if you like sweet German beers with lots-O-kick, this is your beer. This is not what I like in a beer. On my first trip to Germany my first beer was of a similar style, which left me wondering what all the "German bier" fuss was about. (770 characters)

Poured from a 500ml bottle, bottled in 2004. Special aged release by the brewery.

Pours a light brown body the color of light cola; head starts thick but disappears in the blink of an eye. Dark plums and molasses are in the aroma. Flavor is a shell of what it could be but there are glimpses of what i know this beer is. Little carbonation and a bit of oxidation finish things off. Nice marketing ploy by the brewery but this should not be aged so long IMO. (491 characters)

16.9 oz. Bottle. Picked this up in Dallas. Not available here in Wichita.

Appearance: Dark hazy brown. Surprisingly, the thin, coarse head acted just like the head on a soda. Rose up thin and fizzed away immediately. Very heavy bead.

Smell: Green apples and chocolate were the main components. Also some light banana, lemon zest, and a good dollup of grainy wheat. Became somewhat sour on the nose after a short period of time.

Mouthfeel: Kind of thin in the mouth. A little chewy, but also a little chalky. Sometimes, it had an extrememly rough bite in the back of the throat.

Taste: Heavy clove, banana, and tart fruit. Seemed very sour and not really in a good way. Like extremely over-the-top green apple, but with a chemical bite. Powdered cocoa and light wheat rounded out the flavors with some hints of yeast and a continuation of the annoying sour flavor on the finish.

I was pretty disappointed with this one. Between the almost non-existent head and the weird sour flavor, I almost thought that I had on off bottle and didn't review it. But enough of the other flavors seemed on point that I think it is supposed to taste like this.

A: Pours a great, huge head that starts to disipate pretty quickly in my 22 oz. Wiezen Glass. It is a solid brown, and when held up to light shows amber, copper and orange. The head is just of white and looks rather creamy on top with bubbles of varying size underneath. There is decent active carbonation, but not too much.

S: Smells super wheaty, and it's confusing my brain being so brown and smelling like that. I also get a malty sweetness and a sort of funk I usually associate with Belgians. There is also a candi sweetness, perhaps that's what it is, and it's just confusing me. The more I smell it, the more I get just the candi sugar.

T: I really wanted to like this beer, I really did. I just can't seem to get into it though. Perhaps it's a bad bottle? The taste is mildly malty sweet, but tastes more like candi sugar to me than real malt. And the wheat is just a whisp at the end, more of an after taste. I get no hops whatsoever.

M: Ok, very plain. Thin but heavy, mild or little carbonation.

D: I could see where I certain set of people would like this. Must be a bad bottle? (1,095 characters)

Smell: The smell is strong and spicy, with strong alcohol notes. The wheat is noticable but not upfront.

Taste and Mouthfeel: Ouch. Too sweet. The flavors that are present (nuttyness, roasted malts, cloves) are overrun and overpowered by the incredibly malty sweetness. Too much for me, it's killing me. The mouthfeel is chewy and thick.

Drinkability and Overall: It's an ok brew just not quite my cup of tea. Too sweet, too overpowering, no balance, and definitly no focus. I've not had too many Weizenbocks, but I know enough about them to realise there is much more a Weizenbock can be than this. Not bad. (739 characters)

As a Bock fan, and having enjoyed a few weat-Bocks, I thought this beer would be a great late night treat. Especially after reading the reviews on here, and seeing it somehow managed to receive an "A".

Poured into a mug from the bottle I noticed the carbonation almost as soon as I was done pouring. This beer had a mouth feel of a soda, very bubbily and not very beer like. Very wheat taste, and as I would expect from a bock there should have been some sort of maltiness, sadly this was not the case.

on another note there were some nice fruity hints in the smell, but the bitter finish ruined any pleasantness I had with this beer. (639 characters)

7/17/02
What's the deal with making dark wheat beers? Aren't they supposed to be light and refreshing?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CAVEAT: Not my Style

Pouring this, I was rewarded with an initial 1.75 inch, hi density off-white foamy head and the color of the beer is a burnt caramel. The carbonation is at the initial pour, almost champagne like in intensity, with bubbles ascending from all sectors of the glasses interior. The nose offers copious quantities of clove and fennel which somewhat dissipates revealing the yeast and a hint of dark chocolate. The initial mouth feel is quite creamy, as a portion of the head exists throughout the tasting. The finish is quite crisp, due to the persistent carbonation. For me, the clove-like underpinnings remind me somewhat of a "seasonal" holiday flavored brew, and somewhat detract from the overall drinkability of this beer. The combined expansive nature of the style, and the prominent clove / fennel like flavor deeply embedded in this beer is a bit "over the top" as I began to get subtle indications that having gone onto a second bottle might have encouraged my gag reflex into operation. It is the nose of this product that has an enormous weight on how this beer will be generally perceived, evaluated and ultimately enjoyed. The taste is moderately potable, but there is no escaping the outgassing of odoriferous emanations. Although interesting to try, it is doubtful that this beer will find a place in my cellar now or in the future. (1,343 characters)

Pours a reddish brown color. Very odd fizzy head that recedes into nothing. Clove dominates in the smell, as well as something else that I don't like at all. Taste is of cloves and some bananas, with a bit of chocolate. There's almost a burning aftertaste that's rather unpleasent.

Overall, I don't really care for this brew. Not only is it darn expensive ($4 bucks a bottle, almost the same as a Rogue bomber), but it just doesn't do anything for me. I may try it again in a year or so, once my tastebuds have grown. (520 characters)